Hamid Karzai will today urge Barack Obama's administration to commit to securing Afghanistan beyond 2014, after the White House threatened to leave behind no US troops whatsoever after a 12-year war.

The Afghan president is due to seek assurances during talks in Washington that a US presence will remain after next year's planned withdrawal, following the emergence of the so-called "zero option".

He arrived in the American capital with an extensive shopping list of desired equipment for the Afghan military. Aides claimed that he would also demand that the US help secure the Afghan-Pakistani border and stop fuelling corruption by striking deals with regional warlords.

Aides said meetings with Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, would centre on "security, economic and political transition" and the "equipping and strengthening of Afghan security forces".

The US president has pledged to pull out most of the 65,000 American troops in Afghanistan when Nato's combat mission concludes at the end of next year, but is expected to leave a military "footprint".

Gen John Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan, is believed to have presented Mr Obama with three potential scenarios involving 6,000, 10,000 or 20,000 American troops remaining.

However aides to Mr Obama have said that he could yet take the "zero option" of leaving no troops whatsoever in the country beyond the Nato deadline, which gives US forces legal protection.

"That would be an option that we would consider," Ben Rhodes, a White House spokesman, said. "The US does not have an inherent objective of X-number of troops in Afghanistan".

The remarks are likely to cause concern in Whitehall. About 5,000 British troops are expected to remain in the country this year and hundreds could stay beyond the Nato withdrawal.

Mr Rhodes said that while the presidents would discuss the topic, this was "not a visit for making decisions on troop levels" and no figure would be announced when they appear together on Friday.

Afghan officials have in the run-up to Mr Karzai's visit detailed a list of sophisticated equipment they want to bolster security forces as troops leave. It includes tanks, drones, surveillance balloons and aircraft.

Mr Karzai is also seeking control of the Parwan military prison. US officials previously scrapped a planned handover, claiming that the Afghan government were to release terrorists.

A western diplomat said that the president also wanted assurances that the border with Pakistan would be protected from insurgents. "Afghans feel they have been abandoned before by the Americans ... after the Soviets were forced out," the diplomat said. "Karzai wants to get what he can now".

US officials are increasingly irritated by Mr Karzai's domestic grandstanding, which last month saw him blame American forces for the insecurity and corruption inside the country.

"There is a growing perception, for a number of years now, that a significant part of the insecurity in Afghanistan is caused by the way the United States and some of its allies promoted lawlessness in Afghanistan, by spreading corruption in Afghanistan," he told NBC in Kabul.

Mr Karzai's chief of staff, Abdul Karim Khurram, this week told an interviewer that the president would come to Washington armed with a list of grievances demanding action from Mr Obama.

The war has been fought in a very incorrect manner," Mr Khurram said. "It didn't improve the situation, but it worsened it". He added: "The world needs us more than we need them".

Mr Khurram said Mr Karzai would ask the US to stop awarding security contracts to warlords. He said in a speech last month that domestic corruption was being "imposed on us" to weaken the country.

Relations have also been strained this year by a string of attacks by Afghan soldiers on supposed NATO comrades.

"After a long and difficult past, we finally are, I believe, at the last chapter of establishing a sovereign Afghanistan that can govern and secure itself for the future," Leon Panetta, the defence secretary, told Mr Karzai on Thursday.

"We've come a long way towards a shared goal of establishing a nation that you and we can be proud of, one that never again becomes a safe haven for terrorism."